Mad Max at 40

Well, at 41 now, because the article is from last year. It has some interesting tid-bits in it. For example, nearly all of the motorcycle scenes involved actual Australian bike gangs, mostly the Vigilantes -- who were paid in beer, because that's all the producers could afford. Many of the stunts were performed by the bikers, (except the crash scenes, obviously; too much liabilitiy there).

Actor Tim Burns, who played the ‘Johnny the Boy’ character, later recalled working with them, hinting at how some of the striking motorcycle action scenes came about. "They all wanted to ride the bikes as fast as possible, as often as possible, by their nature. Their riding was individually and collectively superb."

Here's another fascinating insight:

Hugh Keays-Byrne, already an accomplished biker, decided to ‘get into character’ for the Toecutter role by riding, with several others, the 550 miles from Sydney to the shoot in Melbourne fully dressed in costume.

"It was a good rehearsal," he remembered years later. "It was about three days and we took the coast road. One of the most pre-occupying thoughts I had was not to look like those cowboys in the Westerns who are never carrying enough kit to camp where they stopped. I had enough kit, bags and that huge axe – all of that had to be slid into the structure of the bike and not fucking kill me!"

I recently watched the movie again, (there is an excllent hi-definition version of the original on Netflix right now, without any of that Kung Fu Theater dubbing), and I am once again struck by how the movie has stood the test of time. I think there are two reasons for this. First, due to the low budget, everything had to be done "for real." There were very few special effects, CGI didn't exist yet, and as previously noted, the motorcyclists were real people, not actors. No, actors are not real people.

The second reason is that the movie does not preach. It's an action film without any pretensions otherwise. Nine times of out ten, when I try to watch a modern A-list movie I can't get past the first 15 minutes. Because within that time frame, Hollywood has crammed every left-wing social justice pet rock they can think of right into my face and screamed "EAAATTT ITTT MOTHERFUCKERRRR!!!" until I just *click* the movie off and find something less irritating to do with my time.

There are still small production companies out there who make movies simply to entertain rather than forcing a whack-job political opinion on their audience, but not many. I'm hoping that the increasing availability of inexpensive production equipment will combine with the bandwidth available to nearly everyone to make Hollywood's social engineering a thing of the past. Hey, stranger things have happened; just ask the RIAA.